McCombs Alumni Network News

Read our sneak preview of the upcoming Texas magazine story, “Ask the Expert,” with a profile of Joe Dowdle, BBA ’04, who offers tips on surviving the Brazilian highlands. Keep an eye on your mailbox for the 2009 Spring/Summer issue of Texas, where you’ll hear from more alumni experts.

Photo courtesy 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. 

Joe Dowdle, BBA ’04, was a contestant on the 18th season of the CBS reality show “Survivor” and spent 21 days in Tocantins, a region of the Brazilian highlands. He was forced to leave the show because of a knee injury. He lives in Austin, where he does site acquisition work for cell phone towers and is also pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter.

How do you survive being stranded in the middle of the Brazilian highlands?
By Joe Dowdle, BBA ’04

Starting a fire is the biggest component to survival because it keeps you warm at night, you can cook fish and boil water. On the first day, total man hours logged, it was a good 24 hours before we finally got a fire going, with 4 or 5 people working on it. The key is the tinder that you use, and the kindling. It has to be 110 percent dry, and it can’t be too spread out. You have to make sure the spark hits right in the middle of an area the size of a pinpoint. Your arms get tired after an hour or two of hacking away at a piece of flint—I’ve never been so frustrated in my whole life. But eventually you get the hang of it, and making fire becomes routine. 

Protein is your best friend. We were just eating five scoops of rice for each meal, so I dropped 25 pounds in the first 12 days. We found a fruit called jatoba that was powdery and chalky and smelled like feet, but it was very rich in protein. When I ate protein, it would stave off the hunger for a couple of hours, which feels like eternity out there.

Everything can be a resource. We used jatoba shells as spoons. And one time I squashed a fly, put it on a hook, caught a little minnow, cut the minnow up, put it back on the hook, caught a smaller fish, cut it up, put it back on the hook and then caught a big fish. You just start thinking like that. Something as small as catching a fly—that becomes your fate.

The small stuff matters. On the 12th day, I got a little scrape, nothing much at all. But it’s impossible to keep 100 percent clean out there, so it got infected. One morning I woke up and it was just out of control. They told me that if I didn’t leave to go the hospital I could die. So they brought in a helicopter for me, took me straight to surgery, drained out the infection, stitched me up and put me on antibiotics. Something that started out as a small scrape put me in the hospital for a week.

You either sink or float real quick. It’s not sink or swim—swimming implies that you’re excelling. It’s hanging in there, and that’s all you’re trying to do. You want to conserve as much energy as possible. You do essentially the bare minimum to get things done and get food. You’re definitely not trying to impress. It’s about sustaining.

Have an idea for a future Ask the Expert segment? Let us know at publications@mccombs.utexas.edu.